What to do with Bagley?

What should we do with Bagley?

  • Give him big development minutes to best guide our course this summer

  • Play him in the hopes somebody will trade *something* for him

  • Give him minor rotation minutes, let him walk this summer

  • Bench him entirely, let him walk this summer

  • Just cut him now


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#91
Are you seriously going to go there and pretend I wasn't talking about the team that won 3/4 championships?
Also note the Kuminga pick came from Minnesota. So they had one down year after 5 straight trips to the finals where Klay and Steph were injured.
yes I am. Because your point misses a key point that when good teams are bad they look to be bad…. Not sorta bad.
 
#92
yes I am. Because your point misses a key point that when good teams are bad they look to be bad…. Not sorta bad.
And you deliberately ignore the point that a team went to 5 straight finals picking behind us. Also having two star players out and unavailable isn't the same as the Kings trying to teach winning to their young core.

Like no denying we've failed because we have. But to insist the only way is a tankathon when the fans can't even handle a few losses in a row is ignoring that most of the teams to have won recently did not pull a process. They either drafted well (all of the stars picked after us), traded for a star, or both, or they got LeBron.
 
#93
And you deliberately ignore the point that a team went to 5 straight finals picking behind us. Also having two star players out and unavailable isn't the same as the Kings trying to teach winning to their young core.

Like no denying we've failed because we have. But to insist the only way is a tankathon when the fans can't even handle a few losses in a row is ignoring that most of the teams to have won recently did not pull a process. They either drafted well (all of the stars picked after us), traded for a star, or both, or they got LeBron.
one team and they may not have gotten to 5 straight without Durant. I’m not sure why people don’t get math that picking in the top 5 dramatically improves your odds. It’s no guarantee but it is a help. You can point at all the one offs you want but it doesn’t change the math.

and who cares what the fans can “handle”. Can it possibly get worse?
 
R

Reyes134

Guest
#96
I mean if he is rebounding and actually trying to take charges u gotta play him. Damian Jones though is hungry and plays hard so whoever plays better should get minutes.
 
Even if we once drafted well, the odds are still very clear with the fact that its so much more likely to draft top level talent top 3 compared to 7-10. Its a big statistical difference so if the objective is to get top level talent via draft, then you just have to accept those statistical facts and consider them while forming your strategy moving forward.
No one is arguing against the fact that you are more likely to get superstar talent with the top picks of the draft than in the 8-10 range. My point was that without a good system in place, you are more likely to turn high picks into busts, whereas a good system can turn late picks into solid players. There will always be exceptions, and yes, ultimately talent will speak, but a strong system to develop and retain talent is needed. Even the successful draft picks I mentioned in my previous post, well we lost two of those 3 (IT and Whiteside) for nothing. Moreover, for most of our single digit picks of the lost decade, we have absolutely nothing to show. It's not just bad drafting. It's a failure to develop players, putting them in position to succeed, gauging when to cut ties, and trying to salvage some value. We failed at it all. No reason to believe that the next round of "rebuild" will not result in more of the same unless we set some system in place.

We seem to have a FO in forever that seems to have some idea. If we can get a solid coaching staff (let's see how Gentry does for a few more games), we might have the nucleus of something.
 
What? Giannis was the 15th pick in 2013, way after every team was scouting world wide.
And "The Joker" fell to the second round. It happens. Overall, I do agree with the earlier post that Geoff (and Pop) were likely ahead of the curve in scouting/drafting international players, and surprises would be rarer now.
 
Petrie was a very good scout of talent and made good picks, when he wasn't handcuffed by the owners. I really believe he would have picked Giannis A if he had been retained as the GM that first year that Ranadive took over. I know that he would have picked Doncic
Possible, and that would have certainly solved a lot of the problems.

That said, I repeat what I have said multiple times in this thread. Would we have put these players in position to succeed? Would they have become superstar talents playing for us, or would be labeled busts/playing for different teams? Would Bagley have been successful if he had played his first few years for Rick Carlisle?

I am not trying to bring down Giannis/Luka, or making excuses for Bagley. However, when we have had the kind of record we have had in player development (including of players we acquired via trades/FA), one has to wonder.

Going back to Rick, remember the 22 game win-streak put together by Rockets in his first season there? 10 of those wins came with Yao out due to injury. McGrady was the only star player for the rest of the stream. Players most of us don't remember made nightly, solid contribution to contribute to this amazing achievement. That's what good coaches do, and I would hate to tank, and repeat the woes of the last several years.

Not saying I'm enjoying the current situation though :)
 
one team and they may not have gotten to 5 straight without Durant. I’m not sure why people don’t get math that picking in the top 5 dramatically improves your odds. It’s no guarantee but it is a help. You can point at all the one offs you want but it doesn’t change the math.

and who cares what the fans can “handle”. Can it possibly get worse?
IKR it’s literally a guarantee the fans will come back if there’s a winning product on the floor
 
Rebuilding with draft picks is pretty much the only way a small market team has a chance. The problems for the Kings are that (1) they've blown far too many picks and other than Bagley (another blown pick) they haven't been bad enough to have any other top 3 picks despite being awful for over a decade and a half.

If the Kings could trade Fox for Simmons and Holmes for Turner I'd be on board with it. You'd need more team focus on rebounding but

C Turner
PF Simmons
SF Barnes
SG Hali
PG Mitchell

is a strong defensive team with enough shooting to make up for Simmons. Swap Mitchell for Buddy if you need additional spacing/shooting.

But I don't know that either of those trades is realistic. Fox's value has dropped with his poor play to start this season and I'm not sure why Indiana would want a center that's a worse fit next to Sabonis, even if the price tag is cheaper.

Either way, this team needs to increase the overall talent level. Whether they can do that through trades and FA signings I don't know. They certainly should be able to do it through the draft (who wouldn't want Evan Mobley or Scottie Barnes right now - and the Kings were only a few more losses or lottery luck from having either) but that requires not just getting high picks, but making the right ones.
Getting Simmons/Turner is a home run that’s two elite elite defenders and Turner stretching the floor. Problem is I doubt we have enough to get Turner
 

gunks

Hall of Famer
sure so did Vlade. If Vlade was wrong in considering fit 100%, Monte is equally wrong in considering fit 0%
BPA at 2nd pick every time…. Although, maybe Vlade thought he was drafting BPA on account of his terrible terrible terrible judgement.

I wouldn’t say Monte was equally wrong at all if we’re talking misjudging a 2nd pick with a future HOFer available (maybe even two, depending on how Trae shakes out) vs the 9th pick with a bunch of role players available.

I do think fit is important when you’re drafting from that 3rd/4th tier of prospects and BPA gets a bit murky, but I think Monte was also drafting for a culture changer.
 
BPA at 2nd pick every time…. Although, maybe Vlade thought he was drafting BPA on account of his terrible terrible terrible judgement.

I wouldn’t say Monte was equally wrong at all if we’re talking misjudging a 2nd pick with a future HOFer available (maybe even two, depending on how Trae shakes out) vs the 9th pick with a bunch of role players available.

I do think fit is important when you’re drafting from that 3rd/4th tier of prospects and BPA gets a bit murky, but I think Monte was also drafting for a culture changer.
I’m not disagreeing. But we all heard that Vlade was concerned about Luka taking the ball out of Fox’s hands. Fit versus potential. I’m not arguing the ratio should be the same just that one should have a ratio.
 

gunks

Hall of Famer
I’m not disagreeing. But we all heard that Vlade was concerned about Luka taking the ball out of Fox’s hands. Fit versus potential. I’m not arguing the ratio should be the same just that one should have a ratio.
Fair enough.

And ugh, don’t remind me that Vlade passed on Luka to keep the ball in Fox’s hands when he was coming off a horrendous rookie season. Nobody knew Fox would be a 20+ ppg scorer. At the time I feel like people were hoping he’d stick as a bench PG.

We’ll see how it works out with McNair, but I’m just happy he hasn’t made humongous blunders out the gate like Vlade with the Philly trade.
 
It was done because Vlade was worried 100% about fit. The Davion pick was done because Monte worried O% about fit. Opposite sides of the same coin.
Fit doesn't matter when you're a bad team and struggling to find talent. If we were the Warriors, sure, you sacrifice talent to get the right fit around Steph/Dray/Klay. But a team that hasn't sniffed the playoffs in 15 years can't afford to be passing on BPA.

And through 20 games, Monte was right. Mitchell has clearly been the best player from 9 back in the draft so far.
 
And you deliberately ignore the point that a team went to 5 straight finals picking behind us. Also having two star players out and unavailable isn't the same as the Kings trying to teach winning to their young core.

Like no denying we've failed because we have. But to insist the only way is a tankathon when the fans can't even handle a few losses in a row is ignoring that most of the teams to have won recently did not pull a process. They either drafted well (all of the stars picked after us), traded for a star, or both, or they got LeBron.
Tankathon is such a lazy person’s avenue of thinking. As you said, it’s not even proven to work. Certainly not better than simply finding the right players from whatever position you may be drafting by competing each and every night with the best roster you can put out on the floor.

To strengthen the point, the KINGS have clearly not been purposely tanking and fielding g-league teams. YET you could go back through pretty much EVERY draft for the past 15 years and find players drafted after their own draft pick that had they been selected would have helped to form a perennial playoff contender.

KINGS could have had Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Kawhi Leonard, Dame Lillard, Draymond Green, CJ McCollum, Rudy Gobert, Nikola Jokic, Myles Turner, Devin Booker, Pascal Siakam, Donovan Mitchell, #77, or Trae Young. Among many, many others.

Didn’t need to intentionally tank to get ANY of those players. And if they had managed to actually select a couple of them over the years to go along with what they already had — we most likely wouldn’t be having this conversation in perpetuity.
 
Tankathon is such a lazy person’s avenue of thinking. As you said, it’s not even proven to work. Certainly not better than simply finding the right players from whatever position you may be drafting by competing each and every night with the best roster you can put out on the floor.

To strengthen the point, the KINGS have clearly not been purposely tanking and fielding g-league teams. YET you could go back through pretty much EVERY draft for the past 15 years and find players drafted after their own draft pick that had they been selected would have helped to form a perennial playoff contender.

KINGS could have had Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Kawhi Leonard, Dame Lillard, Draymond Green, CJ McCollum, Rudy Gobert, Nikola Jokic, Myles Turner, Devin Booker, Pascal Siakam, Donovan Mitchell, #77, or Trae Young. Among many, many others.

Didn’t need to intentionally tank to get ANY of those players. And if they had managed to actually select a couple of them over the years to go along with what they already had — we most likely wouldn’t be having this conversation in perpetuity.
Reading that list of star players is really depressing. FO ineptitude aside, what are the odds that the Kings couldn’t get lucky just ONCE during those drafts?!
 
Fit doesn't matter when you're a bad team and struggling to find talent. If we were the Warriors, sure, you sacrifice talent to get the right fit around Steph/Dray/Klay. But a team that hasn't sniffed the playoffs in 15 years can't afford to be passing on BPA.

And through 20 games, Monte was right. Mitchell has clearly been the best player from 9 back in the draft so far.
Duarte and Sengun both rated higher

https://www.nba.com/news/kia-rookie-ladder-nov-24-2021-edition
 
Reading that list of star players is really depressing. FO ineptitude aside, what are the odds that the Kings couldn’t get lucky just ONCE during those drafts?!
Well, I’d argue they did get lucky getting DeMarcus in 2010. It’s easy to forget how good he was for a while.

Had they paired Boogie with any one of Steph or Klay or Dame or Kawhi or Giannis, etc. things could have been drastically different.

Hell, they realistically could have had a trio of Boogie, Klay and Giannis. Or Boogie, Kawhi and Dame.
 
I think Cap has some bragging rights when it comes to Bagley. Even if it's only been 2 games. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back @Capt. Factorial .
No disrespect to Cap, but I think many here have wanted MB3 to get playing time. The problem until this season has been his health and not being able to be on the court more than half the time to help the team.

Other than Luke Walton — who inexplicably wouldn’t play him this season — IDK too many that didn’t want to see the guy develop into something for the KINGS.

I’ve said many times, rooting for MB3 to fail is counterproductive for the KINGS and their future success. Any KINGSFAN that really wants the team to improve should want Bagley to play and do well.
 
No disrespect to Cap, but I think many here have wanted MB3 to get playing time. The problem until this season has been his health and not being able to be on the court more than half the time to help the team.

Other than Luke Walton — who inexplicably wouldn’t play him this season — IDK too many that didn’t want to see the guy develop into something for the KINGS.

I’ve said many times, rooting for MB3 to fail is counterproductive for the KINGS and their future success. Any KINGSFAN that really wants the team to improve should want Bagley to play and do well.
Sure. But hoping that Bagley would turn into something and actually believing Bagley had the ability are two different things.
 
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